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Good Luck to DCPS!

This is the big week for DC Public Schools’ students, who will be taking their annual exams as part of the Average Yearly Progress section of No Child Left Behind. This is a big week for Michelle Rhee, as much depends on the students’ improvement in terms of what sort of political capital she can bring to bear against the Teachers’ Union when it comes to contract negotiation. Go DC!

I live and work in the District of Columbia. I write at We Love DC, a blog I helped start, I work at Technolutionary, a company I helped start, and I’m happy doing both. I enjoy watching baseball, cooking, and gardening. I grow a mean pepper, keep a clean scorebook, and wash the dishes when I’m done. Read Why I Love DC.

11 thoughts on “Good Luck to DCPS!”

They disregard major factors like the degree of parent commitment, students habits and economic inequality.

D.C. Superintendent Michelle Rhee’s school reform recipe includes three ingredients: close schools rather than improve them; fire teachers rather than inspire them; and sprinkle on a lot of media-thrilling hype. Appearing on the cover of Time, she sternly hovered over the camera holding a broom, which she was using to sweep trash, the trash being a metaphor for my urban teacher colleagues. MS RHEE, MY COLLEAGUES WHO WORK IN SOME OF THE TOUGHEST SCHOOLS IN THE UNITED STATES ARE NOT TRASH. The implication that a small group of self-proclaimed reformers from elite colleges have all the answers represents class arrogance not genuine talent.

TFA teachers are a welcome addition to our nation’s public schools, and TFA and its offspring, the KIPP and YES charter schools, provide valuable services, but no data exists proving they are closing the achievement gap, or that they have a formula to close the gap, for the majority of low-income students. KIPP/YES teachers do great work, but they have students whose families apply to schools with longer school days, Saturday classes, an extra month of school in the Summer, as well as Saturday classes and nightly loads of homework. Only a small minority of working-class families will allow a school to take over their kids lives that much.

When TFA’s leadership argue that schools, and not bad habits, are the cause of the achievement gap, they are discounting the role INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY plays in education. If you cannot look to government and public employees for the solution to every social problem, you cannot blame them every shortcoming either, especially in an endeavor like education which relies so much on individual hard work. In fourteen years teaching, I have met maybe two teachers who did not teach. Teachers do teach.

By blaming teachers, and seeking in Washington D.C., Houston and New York, to terminate teachers based on student behavior, they are waging an Ivy League class war against professionals who endure challenging circumstances for lower-middle class pay.

“By blaming teachers, and seeking in Washington D.C., Houston and New York, to terminate teachers based on student behavior, they are waging an Ivy League class war against professionals who endure challenging circumstances for lower-middle class pay.”

But yet, at some point, the teachers aren’t doing their jobs. And, frankly, if individual responsibility was such a big part of education, why are the teachers unions so dead-set against any kind of individual responsibility for teachers? The plan I saw offered a significant raise for existing teachers, provided that they were willing to waive tenure for one year, but the union won’t touch it or go near it. Why not? Why not ask teachers to assume some of that individual responsibility that you want to apply to the students, too?

How do you know? How does Wendy Kopp know? How does Michelle Rhee know?

You can’t determine whether a teacher is doing his/her job by test scores. Just because the teacher teachers does not mean the students is committed. And, just because students are learning does not mean a teacher is teaching, some kids will learn in spite of the teacher. That is just the reality and most teachers know it.

I would not trade my job security for one year’s pay, especially in a major recession, do you think we are stupid, I have had 28 kids in a working class school pass AP exams. It’s just not a wise move.

“How do you know? How does Wendy Kopp know? How does Michelle Rhee know?”

There’s metrics, and there’s performance reviews. Combine them into a common sense decision. This isn’t rocket science.

You can’t determine whether a teacher is doing his/her job by test scores.

I don’t think anyone here believes that. But political capital can be based on test scores in part.

Just because the teacher teachers does not mean the students is committed. And, just because students are learning does not mean a teacher is teaching, some kids will learn in spite of the teacher. That is just the reality and most teachers know it.

Part of your job as a teacher is motivating students and getting them to commit. If you can’t do it, why are you there? For an easy paycheck with full job security?

I would not trade my job security for one year’s pay, especially in a major recession, do you think we are stupid, I have had 28 kids in a working class school pass AP exams. It’s just not a wise move.

I know! Actually having to be accountable for your abilities is really just a shame…

It’s not just about opportunity, Jesse, it’s also about doing what’s right for the kids, which can mean firing people who are either uninterested in changing their teaching style, or who are coasting based on the bullshit tenure system (man, I wish I had tenure with all my clients!) and toward something that’s more balanced toward performance and reviews.

Doing what’s right for kids, Tom, involves providing their families with health insurance, decent housing, economic stabiity through unemployment benefits, and immigration reform. I have never met a teacher who is a miracle worker, and about the first two years of KIPP’s founders teaching experience. Why is teacher tenure in the inner city so grating to you–and not teacher tenure in the suburbs, or in rich city neighborhoods, or professor tenure? Why do we hate it when somebody else has job security? Job security is pretty strong in Western Eurpean nations and they do pretty well educatinally and have a much smaller fraction of their people in jail or prison. Friend, not all kids are the same. Here is what you are going to get when you entice teachers with possible $100,000 salaries, and threaten them with termination: you are going to get a whole lot of cheating. Teachers are no worse than the average person, but they are no better either, and some will engage students in cheating if you put their heads in the vice, just like our business people cheat and manipulate.

I missed finishing a sentence. Read about the founders of KIPP and the frustration they had in a regular public school. They saw themselves as having failed. They are right in that you need a different culture in the schools. Teacher tenure or teachers unions are neither the solution nor the problem, and fixating on them are just ideological points.

I agree there are social policy issues that are broader than teacher contracts. However, teachers still have to hold up their end of the bargain: provide quality instruction to children, motivate students to achieve at high levels, and prepare them for life after high school. If you haven’t yet, grab a copy of Marc Tucker’s book on School Standards. There are ways to get to good teaching metrics and practices without having blame the students.

I have never met a teacher who is a miracle worker, and about the first two years of KIPP’s founders teaching experience. Why is teacher tenure in the inner city so grating to you–and not teacher tenure in the suburbs, or in rich city neighborhoods, or professor tenure?

Public School Teacher Tenure in Primary and Secondary schools is the enemy. The tenure system is designed to protect senior academics in the middle of their research projects. Primary and Secondary school teachers aren’t in the same position and should serve at the pleasure of the school board on five-year contracts. Not get a lifetime appointment after two years of teaching.

Why do we hate it when somebody else has job security? Job security is pretty strong in Western Eurpean nations and they do pretty well educatinally and have a much smaller fraction of their people in jail or prison.

I don’t hate job security, I hate complacency. And job security, specifically backed by a union that seeks only to enrich its members, not society at large, is part of what holds schools back. I know that I ran into several teachers (jn my suburban district in Central California) who were working well after their retirement years so they could enrich their pension, not so that they could continue to provide quality education to the next generation.

Friend, not all kids are the same. Here is what you are going to get when you entice teachers with possible $100,000 salaries, and threaten them with termination: you are going to get a whole lot of cheating. Teachers are no worse than the average person, but they are no better either, and some will engage students in cheating if you put their heads in the vice, just like our business people cheat and manipulate.

You must really not like your fellow professionals much, or you must be reading off the union’s talking points here, Jesse. Pretty much every teacher I’ve talked to has trotted out the, “Well, I’d never cheat, but I always know someone who would.” Those are the people that you’re protecting with your union contracts. Those are the ones who got soft after five years in the classroom and are coasting out the rest of their 20 while the rest of us have to work for a living. And you’re protecting them, why, exactly?

Like I said before, no single metric should determine whether or not teachers remain in the classroom, but we shouldn’t hostile to the concept that some teachers are bad at their job, and should be either made to reform their work or leave their job. Protecting them serves only to protect the bullshit union instead of to enrich society at large.

I wrote: “I would not trade my job security for one year’s pay, especially in a major recession, do you think we are stupid, I have had 28 kids in a working class school pass AP exams. It’s just not a wise move.”

Tom wrote: I know! Actually having to be accountable for your abilities is really just a shame…

I thought your other arguments were challenging and worthy of response, this one is just low, but I can sink just as low. How can you be sure that some administration system of accountability will be fair? You can’t and the accountability systems usually are not. In my district we have merit pay. Three years ago, I did a great job as a teacher–I got zero dollars extra–last year I think I was all right, fair, but certainly, not great (new grade level, new subject) but I got $6000 extra. Liked the money, yea, but did not trust the formula that gave it to me.

“How can you be sure that some administration system of accountability will be fair? You can’t and the accountability systems usually are not.”

Your experience with bonus-based pay certainly does belie a problem with the current system, but isn’t there a way that this can be done? Some system based on assessments, peer review and administration review? Surely there’s a way to do it, Jesse. If we can figure it out in other fields, there’s got to be one for teaching, too.

There might be an administration I’d trust to be honest and fair enough that I’d feel comfortable forgoing tenure but Fenty ain’t leading it.

I think the Teacher’s Union needs to get with the program and become a part of the solution but I blame them not one iota for being suspicious. When someone comes to me offering to trade me some money in exchange for some protections against abuse I’d be suspicious too.

Tenure has been a source of problems when dealing with crappy employees but it’s also been critical in protecting people whose trade is in ideas and education from shifting political winds. Our society shows no signs of becoming less likely to get up in arms over the things that happen in the classroom that they disagree with. Going without tenure puts these instructors at the mercy of people at or near Rhee’s level when it’s expedient to throw them to the wolves over a public kerfuffle.

The fact that the Fenty administration went straight for removing tenure rather than modifying conditions and added exemptions is very telling in my opinion.

Tom Bridge

I live and work in the District of Columbia. I write at We Love DC, a blog I helped start, I work at Technolutionary, a company I helped start, and I'm happy doing both. I enjoy watching baseball, cooking, and gardening. I grow a mean pepper, keep a clean scorebook, and wash the dishes when I'm done. Read Why I Love DC.

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